


She Paid the Price for Her Love

by orphan_account



Category: Little Mermaid - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Little Mermaid forsakes her life on land and returns to the sea but not without paying a heavy price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Paid the Price for Her Love

**Author's Note:**

> story came from the prompt: The Little Mermaid/Genocide. Characters are not mine but based on the 1989 Disney film as well as the HCA fairy tale.

The stench, more than anything else, drew her out of hiding. Blood. It was not, however, the scent of fresh kill, appetizing and enticing. Instead, the smell churned her stomach and made her gills snap closed.

Still, she had to find its source. And find out if there were any survivors. 

She followed the odor to a shallower part of the ocean, where the sun lit the water so it was not pitch black. For a mermaid, though, it was harder to see. One minute she was swimming in cool, dark water. The next, red and heat choked her nose and gills. Blood stained the sea around her scarlet, and the waves beyond her shimmered in a deep purple mixture of sanguine red and blue water. 

Choking on the blood of her people, she swam forward. The sights that greeted her were much worse than she expected.

Limbs came into focus first, followed by bodies, and last of all, faces of the people she knew and loved, mutilated or frozen in terror. The warriors had not been able to protect their people. The bodies of the young, the old, and the vulnerable floated near the surface alongside the ones of those who had been trained to defend them.

Who were these monsters, she thought, who could kill with such cruelty and such skill? King Triton's warriors had been the best in the sea. To defeat them and to defeat the king must have taken... someone of great power.

She had trusted him, the human. That had been her gravest mistake.

Love, she thought now, with bitterness, and the promise of a better life... how stupid could she have been? Love was pain, she'd learned, more than the prick of a thousand knives each time she'd set her feet upon the sand. More than the burn of the sun on her skin, so hot that when she returned to the water, her scales were black and charred.

The man said he loved her, but it was conditional. He loved her as long as she loved him, loved him enough to die for him up above the shore, even when the ocean called to her, to her very soul. But she had ignored it for love.

He did not love her enough to value her life. So when she chose the ocean and home, he would not let her return without a price.

She paid in the blood of her family and her kingdom.

The men had come with their ships and diving gear and harpoons, and her father told her to hide. "He wants you," the king had said. "Go and you'll be safe."

She'd gone. Self-preservation had always come naturally to her.

The remains of those who’d fought to defend her told a different story: one of self-sacrifice, bravery, and ultimately, defeat. The pressure of guilt threatened to crush her as she made her way through the palace-turned-burial-ground.

A glint of gold caught her attention, and she swam down to it. Her father's trident, half covered by stand, stuck up out of the ocean floor. She picked it up and felt electricity surge through her palm and up her arm. It was hers now, the power her own to wield, and she felt a terrible form of it coursing through her veins.

Her first instinct had been to flee. But now, her impulses drove her toward revenge.


End file.
